


The Friendship Stays Warm

by tortoisegirl



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Cooking, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Soup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-26
Updated: 2009-08-26
Packaged: 2017-10-18 12:52:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/189078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortoisegirl/pseuds/tortoisegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"As long as the pot is boiling the friendship will stay warm."  Rorschach cooks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Friendship Stays Warm

He doesn’t like being in the kitchen at their apartment, not after he burns his hand while trying to make scrambled eggs and earns a slap to the face for dropping the pan.

It surprises him, then, when he's drawn to the kitchen at Charlton. He ends up there, knees pulled to his chest as he huddles against the faintly humming refrigerator, after David Case steals his Minutemen comic book and chips one of his teeth when he tries to get it back. Except the kitchen isn’t empty this time, as it always is during his after hours explorations. The home’s cook, whom Walter’s glimpsed when it’s his turn to bring his table’s plates in to the dishwasher, looms over him, hands on hips, before pulling him up and sitting him down at a table in the corner. He’s a skinny man, possessing all of his teeth and not much of his hair, wearing a navy blue apron dotted with the greasy spills of meals past. Probably in his fifties, though he may as well be a hundred to Walter’s ten year old mind.

His name is Mr. Orr. Walter should be leaving (he’s not supposed to be there, probably’ll end up in trouble), but “C’mon, kiddo, tell me what’s wrong,” is all the old man says, and Walter is spilling his guts. He cradles a glass of water in his small hands as he watches the cook’s knobby ones move faster than looks safe with a knife, flashing it over a pile of carrots and celery, all the while prodding Walter to continue about his life at the home. He’s just finished detailing the way the other boys make too much noise while he's trying to read when Mr. Orr slides a bowl of chicken noodle soup on the table.

It’s the cook’s turn to talk as Walter picks up the spoon, recounting in a gruff voice what it was like sharing a room with three younger brothers and cooking for them with whatever he could get for a dime at the stall down the street. Walter only hears half of it, absorbed in slurping a soup that’s miles better than the reheated stuff they’re portioned at meals.

He can’t risk sneaking into the kitchen that often, but he volunteers to clear the dishes after meals whenever he can. Mr. Orr grins and calls him a good kid every time. He only makes the soup once more, about a year later when a surprise kiss on the cheek from a girl at school rattles him so badly Mr. Orr adds another whole wing’s worth of chicken to the pot.

They never see each other after Mr. Orr leaves the job when Walter’s twelve, but when he’s seventeen Walter pulls The Joy of Cooking from the library shelf and pages to the chapter on soups. Crestfallen, he scans the list of ingredients and supplies he’ll never have the money to indulge in and memorizes the recipe anyway.

\--

It doesn’t surprise him when Daniel’s kitchen becomes his favorite spot in the house. He doesn’t eat at Daniel’s often, but after his partner coaxes him to stay with a plate of syrup-drenched French toast, Rorschach concedes the occasional post patrol meal. It should be alarming, he knows, how easily a room in someone else’s house starts to feel like a place he belongs, but the kitchen is always warm and smells faintly of coffee and the distaste just isn’t there. Besides, it's _Daniel's_ kitchen. He contents himself with the fact that the rest of the house still feels alien, and follows Daniel up from the Nest more often than not.

Most of what Daniel makes doesn’t involve actual cooking, microwaving leftover takeout or frozen dinners. Sometimes he ventures simple meals of his own, applying his meager culinary skills to pancakes or pasta with jarred sauce. He only does that when neither of them are too tired or injured, or when he’s contriving to keep Rorschach there longer.

Soup, he finds out, falls into the former category. Daniel makes it the night Rorschach admits he doesn’t want to trudge home through the snow until he’s warmed up a bit first. He really should go (the snow is piling up fast, the trip home looking worse every minute), but “Stay for a while. I’ve got some chicken noodle soup we can have,” is all Daniel says, and Rorschach pauses only a moment before accepting.

It’s the stuff from a can, the same condensed add-water-and-heat mixture he himself sometimes makes on the one working burner in his apartment. Too salty and thin, no delicacy at all in the flavors, but Rorschach gladly accepts the bowl Daniel hands him. They stay up late that night, slurping noisily and discussing the latest case, not entirely aware of the quiet warmth settling around them as they eat. They end up working out some crucial clues to the case at the kitchen table that night, and Rorschach is too pleased to care that he falls asleep on Daniel’s couch.

\--

He waits at the table on the night he arrives for patrol to find Daniel absent from both the Nest and the kitchen. He’s just getting annoyed at Daniel’s tardiness when hasty footstep and strange sounds from above send him bolting upstairs, nerves flaring. He finds no intruders, no dangers, only Daniel pallid and groaning next to the toilet he’d just been retching in.

It’s annoying that the human body’s weaknesses must sometimes be indulged, but Daniel sways dangerously as he stumbles back to the bedroom. Uneasy at the thought of that shaky stance on a rooftop or during a fight, Rorschach doesn’t begrudge him a night of rest to get over this stomach bug.

“Watch out for yourself out there,” Daniel calls as Rorschach makes his way downstairs, straining his cracking voice to be heard.

Rorschach finds himself taking the tunnel back to the brownstone after a mostly uneventful patrol. To keep his partner updated, he tells himself, though once in the kitchen he can’t bring himself to go upstairs. Daniel’s probably sleeping anyway.

As he’s rummaging through the cabinets looking for something to eat a Campbell’s soup label catches his eye. The idea comes to him suddenly, unexpectedly, and he’s vetting the kitchen’s contents before he realizes it. Most of the ingredients are there. Not exactly everything, but he’s always been good at improvising and doesn’t see why the skill can’t be applied to cooking.

He locates a saucepan, one of the few things in the kitchen he doesn’t know the exact location of offhand, and turns on the stove. The canned soup thinned with a few cups of water makes a passable broth, and some leftover Gunga Diner chicken shredded into the mix adds a good flavor. His hands are slow and unsure, even without the gloves, as he clumsily runs a knife through the baby carrots and single onion rolling around in the crisper, but the irregular chunks of vegetable are added to the pot followed by half a box of spaghetti noodles. Salt and pepper are basic enough for Daniel to have, though there’s nothing to be done about parsley or bay leaves. It’s good though, coming together in a haze of simmering heat with each stir, filling the kitchen with a warm smell that brings to mind skilled hands and comforting words (though by now whose hands and whose words he’s not quite sure).

He doesn’t intend to stay once it’s ready (there’s an edge of danger, underneath the already disturbing normalcy of it all, that he’s not comfortable with), trusting that Daniel will find and reheat everything once he’s awake. But the soup has been bubbling only a few minutes when a pale, bleary-eyed Daniel shuffles into the kitchen, drawn by the smell.

“Rorschach? You’re…cooking?” is all he says, and Rorschach shrugs and explains that it’s healthier than fast food before popping open a second bottle of Coke.

Looking too drained to demand any further explanation, Daniel drops into a chair and Rorschach starts briefing him on the night’s patrol. There isn’t much to tell. By the time the botched home robbery and confiscated marijuana are covered Rorschach decides the soup is as ready as it ever will be.

“You’re not having any?” Daniel asks as Rorschach puts a bowl in front of him.

“Not hungry,” he lies, and slides into the seat opposite, Coke in hand. “Supposed to be good for people who are sick.”

“Sorry about tonight. I don’t know where this stupid virus came from. I didn’t want to leave you hanging out there by yourself, but… I would probably have been more of a liability than anything else.”

Daniel eats slowly, almost cautiously at first, blowing on each spoonful before tipping it between his lips. A few bites later he’s gulping it down, slurping up noodles inelegantly and unapologetically.

“How come you never get sick, huh?” he asks between swallows. “Got some secret weapon, or just lucky?’

“Have gotten sick. Badly once, before we were partners. Went out on patrol anyway, ended up blacking out on the 5th story of a fire escape. Nothing happened,” he adds as Daniel pulls a face somewhere between horrified and amused. “Seemed I picked a good place to be vulnerable. Deserted building. Lucky in that sense, I guess.”

“Well, if it ever happens again just know I’d much prefer you rest up to get better before going out. If you're anything like I was earlier...I wouldn’t look forward to hauling you back here.” He tilts his bowl to scrape up the last drops. “Plus I doubt I could make soup this good. How long were you active before we partnered up?”

He answers as Daniel refills the bowl, brushing aside his usual distaste for personal discussion by reasoning that it can hardly be compromising to talk about himself only as a mask. That segues easily into Daniel’s early days as a crimefighter. When Daniel tells the story of Archie’s construction Rorschach gets a little overwhelmed at the sheer amount of work he never knew Daniel put into the ship he rides in every night. He listens mindfully as Daniel outlines the trouble he’s had incorporating a camera into his goggles. Once they start reminiscing about Big Figure’s capture he leans forward with elbows on the table, growing almost chatty with nostalgia.

“I don’t know how to thank you for this,” Daniel says once the pot on the stove is emptied and two more drained Coke bottle clutter the table.

“No need. No big matter. It’s just soup.”

But Daniel claps him on the back and smiles and thanks him just the same. Rorschach wonders if maybe it’s okay that it _was_ more than just soup.

In two days Daniel is recovered and back out as Nite Owl, and Rorschach splurges and buys the ingredients to make the soup at home. It doesn’t quite taste the same, though, in a way he can't pinpoint. He kicks open Daniel’s front door and leaves the soup in his fridge, along with the saucepan and utensils he borrowed to make it.

It tastes better when they eat it after patrol the next night.  



End file.
